A typical network environment includes a number of user devices such as computers, workstations, and servers, and network devices such as routers, hubs, switches, firewalls and load balancers. A local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), and the Internet are examples of known computing or communication networks.
In a known network environment, a user or network administrator uses a computer, workstation or a server as a network management station to individually communicate with each of the network devices that requires configuration. An example of the manner in which network devices are configured according to a known method is shown in FIG. 6. Typically, a network administrator connects to the first (or next) device (block 50) and configures that device to the desired settings (block 52). This requires additional intermediate steps such as logging into the device, going into an enable mode and a configuration mode, creating the desired configuration, adding ports to the device and saving the new configuration. When this process has been completed, the network administrator exits from connected device (block 54). Then, if there are additional devices to be configured (block 56), the administrator then connects to the next device (block 50), configures that device (block 52) and exits from the device (block 54), performing all the intermediate steps described above. Subsequently, the administrator repeats these steps for any additional devices. Individually connecting, configuring and exiting every network device requiring configuration is time consuming, particularly in networks where there may be hundreds of network devices.